


Tempus Fugit

by PlaidAdder



Series: Missing Pages [16]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Book: The Sign of the Four, Epistolary, Holmes Brothers, M/M, POV John Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 02:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14781737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: I want to begin by apologizing for the hostile tone of your brother's letter to you. I haven't read it; but I observed his features while he wrote it, and made my own deductions. He has given me leave to include my own letter to you, and promised not to read it. I will not take up too much of your time.*****Watson writes to Mycroft, and talks about his own older brother.This story, "Contra Mundum," "The Cornwall Job," and "What the Brandy's For" all deal with the same incidents from different perspectives. It doesn't matter too much what order you read them in. They all take place shortly after "A Close Shave."





	Tempus Fugit

July ---, 1891.

Dear Mr. Mycroft Holmes,

I want to begin by apologizing for the hostile tone of [your brother's letter to you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14768993). I haven't read it; but I observed his features while he wrote it, and made my own deductions. He has given me leave to include my own letter to you, and promised not to read it. I will not take up too much of your time.

My father died when I was a boy of nine. My elder brother, Henry, became head of the household at the age of fifteen. He took his responsibilities very seriously. My mother was greatly comforted by this, and encouraged him to be strict with me in order to check my natural failings and inculcate sound principles and good discipline. He  _was_ strict; but no more severe to me than he was to himself, and never cruel. His memories of our father were clearer and brighter than mine, and I believe our father was in a manner of speaking always looking over his shoulder, always commenting on what sort of man he was making of me. In the breast pocket of his waistcoat, he always carried our father's gold pocketwatch. On the few occasions during my childhood when, in a moment of happiness or affection or uncharacteristically childlike elation, my brother embraced me, I would lay my ear over his waistcoat pocket, and listen to the steady tick-tick-tick of the mechanism. Henry cared for that watch as if it were my father; and to him, in a way, perhaps it was.

Henry wished me to believe him strong, capable, upright, devout, clear-sighted, stern of purpose, unflinching in principle. I happily obliged him. I believed, until I finished public school, that he was a teetotaler. It was not until my mother died, after my first term in medical school, that I ever saw--or ever  _knew_ that I was seeing--him intoxicated. Her loss was indeed terrible to him. It was terrible to me too; but he would not speak of her to me, and he always stopped me when I tried. He said there was no use indulging in sentiment, and that we must bear up and soldier on. I was still, at that time, too much the younger brother to realize how utterly incapable he was of doing so, without the support of another human being before whom he could acknowledge his frailties. When I came home on holiday, he put on a brave face and made a good show. It took me too long to conquer my desire to believe in the man he wanted to be. It took me too long to forgo the comfort of believing in a brother who--exasperating and unfeeling as he might sometimes appear--was invulnerable, incorruptible, and strong and good enough to keep me always safe.

He would never accept my help. To offer it was to admit that there was no longer anyone left in the world who believed in the man he wanted to be. I could never convince him that all I wanted was for him to be happy as the man that he actually was. The more often I offered my help, the more offensively he rejected it. By the time I left for Afghanistan, we had not corresponded in months. The first I heard of his death was when a crape-bordered letter reached me at Baker Street, attached to a parcel containing my father's pocketwatch. The sight of it affected me as if it had been my poor brother's own wasted corpse. I had it cleaned; but I could not wear it. 

You are no doubt impatient already with this long, irrelevant story about someone else's entirely undistinguished brother. You would not be, if you had been in the room with us when, in a moment of pique, I handed my father's pocketwatch to your brother and asked him what he could make of it. In a quarter of an hour he had deduced all the elements of Henry's tragedy--the elements it had taken me a lifetime to perceive. It made me unbearably angry. I shall never forget how gently your brother received my anger, and with what kindness and tenderness he explained to me how he had made his deductions. I saw, then, that I could not have made any of those deductions, no matter how long I inspected the watch. It was a revelation. We can only see what we are ready to see--and what is visible from the position in which we are placed. I could not have seen Henry's troubles any earlier than I did. Your brother is always ready to see anything that the world may show to him at any moment. _Except_ , perhaps, when it comes to his own older brother.

I hope you will not mind if I conclude by speaking candidly. The stakes are very high for me, and not just because I should prefer to live unpoisoned and die of old age.

My brother is beyond the reach of help. Your brother is not. Help him now, while you can. Don't wait to feel the regret and remorse that I felt, in the years after Henry's death. That is all I have to say.

No. No; I will go further.

My brother was afraid of what the world would do to me if I was not properly seasoned before entering it. You are afraid of what these men will do to your brother if he returns to the world as he is. That's the wisdom of the older brother. Here's the wisdom of the younger brother: no one is infallible. All men are mortal. The more invulnerable a man tries to seem, the closer he is to collapse. The greatest criminal organization of all time is nothing but a collection of human beings. One cannot always win; but one can always stand and fight.

In my last interview with you, disheartening though it was, I caught glimpses of a great heart as well as a great brain. Your brain perhaps is content to view the world from within the rooms of your existence, plying its myriad shuttles and watching shadows play their games in the mirror.  The heart needs more. Your brother knows that; and, I hope, so do you. Respectfully, Mr. Holmes, and with all the admiration that is due to you, I say: Get out of your damned rooms. Come down here and help him, now that he has brought himself to ask. 

 _Tempus fugit,_ brother-out-law. A breath of fresh air won't kill you.

Your obedient &c,

Doctor John H. Watson.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've always really loved the watch bit in Sign of Four, and am disappointed that Doyle seems to have forgotten immediately afterwards that Watson once had a brother, who apparently died pretty shortly before SIGN. Many readers will know that I invested quite heavily in Harry, the Sherlock equivalent of Watson's alcoholic older brother. Poor Henry doesn't get his own story here; but thinking about it, I realized that Watson must have a lot invested in getting Holmes right with Mycroft, and have some insight into that relationship that's not available to either of them. And also he's STILL pissed that Mycroft wouldn't help him look for Holmes.
> 
> Both Holmes and Watson use imagery to describe Mycroft that's taken (in Watson's case, fairly pointedly) from Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott." This means they must have had a conversation at some point where they discussed the similarities between Mycroft's self-created internal exile and the lady and her curse. You can amuse yourself by imagining that.


End file.
